Author ｜
Anne S. Chao
Abstract ｜
This paper uses the method of text-mining by way of statistical analysis (using R programing) to trace the evolution of Chen Duxiu’s idea on patriotism from 1897 to 1942. The methodology centers on the calculation of the frequency of appearance of six keywords, 國民 (citizen), 青年 (youth), 民主 (democracy), 革命 (revolution), 民族 (people) and 愛國 (being patriotic) throughout Chen’s writing career. I conclude that Chen’s thoughts on patriotism matured from a generic, sentimental desire to love one’s country, to advocating Western style democracy, to championing Marxist socialism over time. However, toward the end of his life, Chen argued that Soviet style dictatorship was not socialism, and that capitalist democracy afforded better protection of the individual than Soviet-style dictatorship. An important aspect of the paper is to demonstrate the pros and cons of using a digital humanistic approach to historical analysis.
keywords ｜
New Culture Movement, Chen Duxiu, Zipf ’s Law, socialism, being patriotic